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Author Archives: Hex

I’ll never forget the first time I decided to stand up against street harrassment.

It started on the metro platform. She looked about my age, late teens or early twenties. She was alone. I saw him sidle up to her, heard him shout a comment about the shape of her ass. She scooted away and gripped her bag more closely. When the train came, he followed her on. I was sitting in the first row of seats; they were standing at the front of the car. He asked her if she had a boyfriend. She turned away, tried to pretend he wasn’t there despite him standing right against her back. He told her he wanted to take her home, started listing the things he’d do. She looked pleadingly at the other passengers. They avoided her eyes.

Imagine this but in a dim, crowded train full of people pretending it’s not happening.

There have been numerous posts about the issue of consent on DDP. This is not surprising given how horrifyingly common sexual assault is and how pervasive rape culture can be. Hopefully by now many people have been exposed to the idea of positive consent: it’s not enough to just stop if you hear a “no,” it’s also necessary to check in and receive a clear, preferably verbal “yes.” However, being committed to a culture of consent requires another responsibility: recognizing the implicit power dynamics that are present in all relationships.

I’ve spent a lot of my time teaching environmental education to kids in a variety of settings and age groups. A pretty typical situation has me walking into the job and being given a sheaf of lesson plans on a variety of topics, adjusted for the age of the students I’ll be working with. No matter where I am or who I’m teaching, from preschoolers at a nature center in rural Ohio to middle schoolers at a public school in Washington, DC, one thing was always true: the content of existing lessons completely left out any mentions of environmental justice and environmental inequalities. This leaves a huge gap in children’s conceptions of the environmental issues facing us today.

As a non-binary person who is just starting to physically transition, I’ve been thinking a lot about the way that process is valued by queer and allied communities. I’ve been out as trans for almost a year now. I’ve been using the same pronouns and presenting myself roughly in the same way for most of that time. About two months ago I started taking testosterone. Soon after starting I told an acquaintance about it and she immediately said “Oh, I have a friend who’s doing a project and wants to include a trans voice. Can I give him your name?” Of course, the tokenism at work here could be the subject of a whole post of its own, but the salient point is that I had been trans all along, but it was only after starting hormones that she thought to mention this. In fact, as people found out about my taking hormones – long before there were any actual effects – my preferred pronouns were used more consistently. I started getting requests to sit on panels or to lead trainings. In short, people became noticeably more respectful of my identity.

This is a problem I see happening over and over again in different communities. Despite rhetoric about self-identification being the most important thing, time and again I see hierarchies of who is “really” trans being constructed around who fits the dominant narrative of physical transition, mirroring our mainstream media’s obsession about the physical aspects of transition. The ones who are most respected are the ones who, like me, take medical steps to change their bodies. This ignores the fact that many people who are as legitimately trans as me choose not to or are unable to access these things.

I couldn’t come up with a picture so here is a cat wearing a backpack. You’re welcome.

There are a lot of reasons why people don’t take hormones or get surgery. Continue reading →